Remembrance of Things Past vs. In Search of Lost Time

I just posted this t the Proust group hoping for some guidance, but maybe someone here has a view on this.... I wonder if anyone can comment on the relative merits of the two English translations of À la recherche du temps perdu? There's the older Scott-Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright translation and the newer Prendergast et al. I have only read the first volume in the earlier translation and would like to tackle the remainign volumes soon, but am not sure which to go for. I do read French, but quite slowly and not fluently enough to pick up the nuances of translation. The more recent translation has been both praised and slated in various media. Any comments would be gratefully received. Many thanks!

I've read the Scott-Moncrieff translation twice and loved it. I studied French in high school, but couldn't tackle anything like Proust. As a literature major, I've followed the debate about the shortcomings of the Scott-Moncrieff translation and the pros/cons of the newer translations. As a personal decision, I prefer the poetic license of the Scott-Moncrieff translation to the (possibly) more accurate but (to my mind) more stilted rendering of the newer works. I believe "Remembrance of Things Past" captures the spirit of Proust in a way that "In Search of Lost Time" doesn't, despite the more accurate translation of the latter.

I'd be interested in hearing other views about this, especially from those who read French.

you mention Enright, but his revision of the Scott-Moncrief/Kilmartin translation is pretty recent...1992...it gets a little tricky 'cuz that revision was titled In Search of Lost Time, that's the one i have but i haven't read it yet...i'm not sure how much difference is in the revision versus the original translation...

i've heard mixed things about the newest translations though...Swann's Way seems to consistently get great reviews, but as they're all done by different translators, the others seem to have more shortcomings...and i'd imagine that would lead to some inconsistency as well...also the last uh, two or three volumes of these translations won't be able to be released into the u.s. until 2017 i believe, due to a very stupid copyright law...so you'd have to either import from england or read the original translations of those and so it gets kinda complicated...though i guess most people don't make it that far...i'm sure people think Swann's Way is its own book, so...(though from what i hear, it kind of is and they get less good as they go with a sharp drop in quality halfway through...i plan on reading the whole damn thing though...it just wouldn't feel right otherwise...)

I didn't notice any drop in quality at the halfway point, but that might be an artifact of translation. I do urge you to read the whole thing. If I could have only one book for a desert island, it would be Remembrance of Things Past.
(And my second choice would be Anais Nin's unexpurgated journal.)